The Tale of Ashella, Blood Red, ect
by Letzte
Summary: <html><head></head>In the land of Everland, Cinderella had captured the heart of the prince. Years later, her daughter must team up with the children of the king's jilted lovers in order to save the land from a dark conspiracy... If the other fairy tales willeven cooperate.</html>
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: This chapter is only the prologue to this story so I'm not really worried that it's boring, 'cause what else can you expect from a prologue? This chapter was mostly to introduce the setting and one of the main characters a bit. The next chapter, which introduces the second main character, is much more exciting, by the way.**

**I haven't written in a while and am a little rusty, so please forgive me for any mistakes.**

The sun began to rise over the skies of Everland that morning at the same time it had dutifully for the past several centuries, its pale, white light glowering somberly into the dark skies. The light's illuminating fingertips stretched slowly across the land, casting itself over the miles of valley filled with an ocean of emerald grass, soils rich with minerals, farm crops pregnant with the efforts of the fall season, and herds cattle clustered through the grasslands; and shone equally over the cities, and the capital Wisenia's soot-stained slums where the sky was choked with smog spewed from factories stained with the sweat of urban laborers and its forever damp streets lined with unending waves of beggars and thieves. But the city was defined by its worst part. Looking at the clean white brick roads and plant-laden streets above such slums, surely filled one with the hope of betterment for all. The pure white walls, shimmering glass windows, and jewel-lined grand gates of the Charming Castle stood at the middle of the city as a symbol of that hope, even though now guards patrolled the grounds more relentlessly than ever due to the intense paranoia of the relatively new regents. The sunlight slowly crept across this castle, almost especially brightly into the nursery, over the figure of a small child.

The child in question, a rosebud who could be no older than six, was bawling loudly, rubbing tears fervently from her pure blue eyes. The hallways outside the room were a tumultuous wreck, and the weeping girl listened closely through her tears. The door suddenly banged open, and the girl jumped and twitched her head to the entrant. An old maid to the house, whose face was rapidly flooded with relief. "Princess Ashella!" she exclaimed.

Ashella's countenance soured. "Mama!" she wailed, burring her face in her knees and weeping with renewed vigor. "Ma-ma," she wailed again, like a siren. At this sudden outburst the maid stood frozen in fear before dashing off, calling excitedly for the "good Queen Cinderella". A shadow of a smile crept across Ashella's face, quickly disappearing when the door was opened once again, this time more gently.

The woman who entered the room was extraordinarily beautiful. She was tall and slender with flawless pale skin, honey blonde hair, and pure blue eyes. Queen Cinderella called to the distant, distant echo of her appearance huddled in the middle of the room in a reserved tone. "Ashella."

"Mama!" The child tossed herself into the queen's arms. She buried her face into her mother's gut and wept.

"And what is wrong now, my child?" Queen Cinderella stroked her daughter's messy, pale-brown hair. The queen's eyes were affectionate but exhausted.

"Oh, mama, I had the most terrible dream," burbled Ashella, pressing her head against her mother tightly. The queen nodded, and Ashella continued. "Everything was covered in red stuff and there were so many apples being thrown about and these terrible, ugly monsters that were eating everything and there bright lights that flew about everywhere and all manners of strange people I'd never seen before and I was all alone and you and papa weren't there and I didn't know what to do, or, and, and...!" Ashella began to breathe erratically.

Queen Cinderella pressed a finger to the girl's lips. Ashella stopped talking obediently and her breathing slowed. The queen's tone was now consoling, but her words were cruel to the lonely child's ears. "Now, Ashella. What have I told you about overreacting to these dreams of yours?"

Ashella whimpered, "B-but... but mama!" The girl clasped her hands over her heart and looked up to the queen with pleading eyes. The queen merely sighed and turned away.

"Meera!" she called. "Come and care for Ashella. She's been sleeping in the nursery again." She began to walk away. At the last second she turned her head to her daughter and imparted sternly, "Behave yourself." With the very last words she would ever say to Ashella spoken, Queen Cinderella disappeared around the corner. Ashella let her earlier facade slip off her face. She turned to the window and stamped her foot in frustration, letting an equally frustrated, childlike cry escape her lips.

"My lady." Ashella glanced to the doorway, where Meera, her nursemaid hardly in her teens but entrusted with the care of the probable future heir to the Everland throne, stood. Meera bowed respectfully. Meera walked to the huddle of sheets and began to pick them up and fold them. After several long moments of silence, she began, "Princess Ashella." Meera was given no response. "Forgive me for speaking out of my place, but..." She waited, strained, for an answer, but was again greeted only be silence. Meera gulped and forged on.

"Perhaps it is not my place to comment, but you should not harry the queen so. Princess, you know she has been sickly as of late, and your outburst hardly aid her health. Meera stopped; there was another long silence.

"I know you desire her affections, but... Well, the good queen has done much just to be here. There certainly was no shortage of other maidens vying for the king's attentions, you know! And when she got to the castle, well, there was much rejoicing, of course, but being Queen is not an easy feat! Despite her efforts and intentions, the queen was exhausted. And no one can blame her... Especially with the execution of her stepmother and stepsisters. I mean, despite their cruelty, it must have been hard on her. Losing family always it," Meera rambled. She cut herself off; this time Ashella turned to glare at her, eyes alight with childish, only somewhat misdirected spite.

"All I am saying is that she deserves a bit more respect from you, my lady," Meera finished lamely. Having said her piece, she grabbed the bundle of sheets, bowed, and skittered away. Hearing the door click shut, Ashella pressed her forehead into the cool glass of the window and sighed.

**A/N: One last thing, the actual story takes place several years from this event! (Ashella is much more interesting when she's older, I promise.) The next chapter will also probably have more connections to actual fairy tales.**


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: This took forever to write and I didn't even get as far as I wanted to. Alas! At least I find this chapter somewhat better than the first.**

Ashella ran frantically down the halls, gasping furiously for air, shoes clapping against the unfamiliar stone pathways of the servant's quarter. The princess craned her head behind her to search for pursuers. The halls were empty. Ashella managed a sigh of relief before running straight into a wall. She cried out, stumbled, and fell backwards.

Ashella groaned. Accursed world, swimming in front of her eyes so! She stood, legs wobbling. Could she risk a moment to collect herself? She glanced about the long, stone hallways. Deserted. Ashella closed her eyes, caught her breath. "Surely someone must be chasing me," she murmured to herself, running her fingers through her short, pale brown hair and casting another half-frantic glance about her surroundings. "Why aren't they chasing me?" The princess began to pace nervously across the branching pathway. Perhaps, then, she should go back... No, she could not. She would no longer tolerate their company. But maybe she had overreacted? Hadn't it been fourteen years since her mother had left, anyway? ...But their words had still hurt. Speaking as if her mother no longer mattered, as if she were dead! "Have they any consideration for _my_ feelings? Even if she is sick... My mother should be the one to coordinate the match! N-not my father's advisors, I..." Ashella's sad, angry words bounced off the empty walls.

She pressed against the wall and slumped downward, pushing her eyes into her knees like she had done as a child, and was content to stew about it for a few moments longer. After a bit she sighed and looked up. "Time to go back, then, I suppo-" Ashella cut herself off and slowly looked about the hallways in bewilderment.

...

She was lost. The hallways were completely foreign, all like duplicate twins mocking her ignorance. The princess cocked her head to the side and almost began to laugh, but the kind of laughter that quickly dissolves into tears. She supposed it served her right for running around places she didn't know that well with such reckless abandon. She stood up, now frowning. "Well, I can always..." Ashella grit her teeth and walked over to the nearest door and rested her hand on the knob. Her heart kicked up and she spent a few moments trying to convince herself it was all okay. She was only going to ask for directions; that wasn't so strange. Besides, she was the princess, wouldn't the servants have to help her? "Okay," she breathed, pacified, and opened the door.

The darkness surprised her; not what she had been preparing for. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness, and Ashella could faintly make out several heaps and piles, some more smooth and the others misshapen. It was silent, but Ashella presently heard a soft _shchf, shchf, shchf_ from the corner of the room... "H-hello?" Ashella squeaked. The room corner coughed. "Is someone there?" A tiny flame burst to life in the corner; a candle slowly illuminated the room. The more uniform stacks were revealed to be bananas; the misshapen ones peels. In the corner was the dark figure of a woman. All Ashella could discern was that the woman was gnarled, like an old oak tree.

The woman rose and curtsied. "Good day, my princess," she wheezed. Ashella glimpsed her face. She was positively wretched; aged beyond her years, eyes dull and lightless and hair coarse like wires. The woman sat back down, pulling a tattered red cloak about her shoulders and, with coarse and calloused hands, began peeling bananas with a rusted knife. The princess immediately felt uneasy, there was something wrong about this person. "Excuse me for continuing my work, princess, but bananas don't peel themselves, you know!" The woman cackled, sounding not dissimilar to the cracking of dry branches. Ashella retched slightly; to think that banana pudding had once been her favorite! "How can I be of assistance, my princess?"

"Wha..." Ashella trailed off, still a bit darkly surprised. She swallowed and resumed. "What are you doing here? In the quarters, I mean. Why don't you work with all the other cooks? ...In the pantry?" The woman cackled again. Ashella winced.

"Oh, my. It's a long history, my lady. But one perhaps closer to you than you know."

"What do you mean?" Ashella tilted her head. "Do I... know you somehow?" Ashella didn't think she did. The old woman laughed doubly hard, slapping her leg in mirth and shook her head. "But then who are you?"

"Aye, aye. I'll tell you in good time, princess." The wretched woman was gasping now, and struggled to calm down. Her eyes grew somber. "Where shall I start my story?" She paused, the room was quiet except for breaths. "How about once upon a time? Ah, then I was a pretty, young girl, younger than even yourself and thrice as pretty, I'd argue..." Ashella fought her inclination to snort.

"Somehow I find that hard to believe," she muttered under her breath.

"Mm? Say something, child?"

"N-no! Nothing! Do go on." The princess stared embarrassedly at her feet.

"Aye... So, at the time, your father was a young and faithless whore!" Ashella jumped at such foul language. "Did you not know that, lass? About your father's numerous lovers?" Ashella shook her head, eyes tinged with suspicion and disbelief. As far as she had been told, her mother had been the king's only match, his only love. The wretched woman's eyes grew darker and angrier. "It's hardly a surprise, I suppose. Not with how hard they tried to cover it up, how many women were just swept under the rug. Executed, exiled, jailed... I suppose I got off easily."

"You! And my father? But-!" Ashella objected, but cut herself off. Was something like this really so surprising, considering the great lengths everyone seemed to take to keep her sheltered? She was the one who could most easily find out, being the king's only daughter, was she not? Then this was finally her chance to find out something... something that she didn't know what, but wanted to know. The princess nervously passed a hand through her hair. "Please, tell me the whole story, madam."

The wretched woman needed no encouragement. "It had hardly been a week before... before the king tired of me. And yet how I went on! So blissfully, poisonously unaware of my future! That day I was even going to my grandmother's house to tell her of my... my 'successes'. But- she wasn't even there, just that accursed wolf- I, I was intended to die! If it hadn't been that man I would be dead... And if he hadn't rescued me he wouldn't have been executed!" The woman was quickly becoming hysterical. Ashella backed up to the wall apprehensively. She was quickly realizing that she could hardly trust this woman's story, and fleeing was looking to be a very attractive option right now. "And what was I to do then? I had no option other that to come here, to hide under the nose of my enemy! I was lucky to even get work doing, doing-!" She gestured about frantically. "-this! An anonymous job where no one can know who I used to be... Little Red Riding Hood..."

The wretched woman stood up abruptly and walked to the other corner of the room, fumbling about with scraps. Ashella's fingers slipped frantically against the doorknob behind her frantically. She cursed herself. What in Everland had made her think it was a good idea to listen to this absolutely unstable woman? Ignorance? It mattered not, all that was important now was escape. The wretched woman turned to the princess, eyes rolling in mania. "Please, shild, if you have any mercy! Take this to my grandmother! I must tell her, I must!" The woman grabbed Ashella's hands and attempted to shove a small basket into them.

Ashella shrieked. "No," she begged, "Let go of me!" She twisted and squirmed viciously, but the woman's grasp was strong. Over Ashella's screamed the wretched woman's begging continued. The struggle lasted for what seemed like an endless amount of time... And the woman collapsed. Ashella stood frozen for a moment, her sensed scrambled. She opened the door, walked out, slammed it behind her, and stood there, breathing hard. She still clutched the woman's basket in her hands, but it was hardly noticed. As Ashella stood there, her face twisted more with panic and desperation. She realized, after all that, she still had not found a way out. The princess wailed, then ran wildly down the hall, tripping over her skirts and still gasping, for in her mind she needed escape more than air.

And yet her sheer focus on escape was her downfall again. Whatever breath Ashella had left in her was knocked out when she yanked her dress from under her feet and toppled into something soft and warm. The princess and her assaultee crashed to the ground. At least, that's what Ashella had thought, but when the world stopped spinning she found she was the only one occupying the ground. "What the heck do you think you're do-!" The angry voice stopped abruptly and gasped. Ashella rubbed her eyes and begged her brain to stop mutinying. "P-Princess Ashella? My lady!" Ashella automatically grabbed the hand offered to her and looked up.

Whatever air her lungs had managed to regain was cruelly grasped away. Ashella had never seen anyone who looked quite like the woman in front of her now. Her hair was ebony dark and shimmered in the light, her skin pale as snow, her lips red as blood, and her eyes... her eyes were dark and tinged with red, set in an intense, ruthless stare. They sent a wave of fear through the princess. On her feet, Ashella ripped her hand away, and wobbled, still dazed. "Who are you? I've... never seen you before." She wore a maid's dress, but at the time Ashella felt she couldn't be too trusting.

"Oh, my princess, you look positively unwell! Why, you're so... so pale," exclaimed the maid. She clasped her hands together in a feint of anxiety.

"I'm fine..." Suddenly Ashella felt exhausted. "I... just am lost."

"Ooh, you poor thing!" The maid smiled but it was almost menacing, and her words were sickly saccharin. Ashella, having lived most of her life in social deprivation as well as being far from her best, hardly noticed, but she trembled instinctively. The woman placed a hand on Ashella's shoulder. "Do not fret, my princess. Shall I show you the way?" Ashella gave the maid a long look before nodding tentatively, desire to return overcoming her suspicions. She couldn't put her finger on it, but something seemed wrong. The woman turned to hide her satisfied smile and held her hand out to the princess. Ashella took it, and the world went black.

...

Ashella opened her eyes, her brain foggy. She gasped sharply; where was she, what in the world had happened? She was lying on the clean red sheets of a bed in the middle of a small, wooden, windowless room. A black rug on the floor tried feeble to cover the entire floor. A dresser stood in one corner of the room, a mirror in the opposite. A maid uniform was strewn across the bed next to Ashella. Suddenly the door popped open, and the woman from before strolled in.. "Well, it's about time you woke up."

Ashella shrieked and pushed herself backward against the bedframe. "Who are you? What's going on?"

The woman laughed. "You are quite dense, aren't you? Oh, poor, sheltered princess," she said, tone and eyes relentlessly mocking.

"Oh, sister. Teasing her already, I see?" A young man walked into the room, and Ashella once again had to curse air for being so traitorous. If the woman had been stunning, her brother was in every way her equal. Dark, glossy hair; pure, light skin; and dark, red-tinged eyes, with which he was staring at her intently. "Ah, it seems you were right, sister. That dress is rather becoming on her, isn't it?" And for the first time Ashella noticed she wasn't wearing the same clothes that she was before.

She screamed. "Where are my clothes?"

"Oh, dear. We had to throw them away. It just screamed royalty, you know," the brother responded.

"You mean...! To change my clothes, you had to- to-!" Ashella covered her face with her hands, mortified.

"Oh, don't be such a prude," snapped the woman.

"Don't your servants dress and undress you everyday, anyway?"

"Yes, I fail to see how this is any different."

"Besides, that other dress was so unflattering. Not worthy of a princess at all, eh?" Ashella's head spun. This was all too much. She could only stare at the two in hopeless anguish. The sibling began to laugh. What? What?

The woman slowly quelled her laughter. "Alright, enough games. I suppose I should answer the dull princess' earlier questions now, shouldn't I?" The woman smirked; her brother nodded. Ashella didn't even move. In her own way she was trying to convince herself this was all a dream. What else could she do? "I," she started, placing her hand on her chest, "Am Blood Red, daughter of ex-consort to the king, Snow White. And you, my new friend, are our business partner - kidnappee, if you will. The pivot of our plan to overthrow the king."

**A/N: Hohoho! Blood Red's name is **_**so**_** clever! (Being sarcastic, you know.)** **Also, poor Ashella. The fool who can't get a break. (Except frequently from air.) Also, I haven't thought of a name for the brother yet, any suggestions?**


End file.
